"my own unnecessariness"

I direct you today to the website of the Poetry Center at Smith College, which provides many opportunities to hear poets read in the Northampton area. Next week, Tony Hoagland will be reading. I was unaware of his work until today, and I've really enjoyed reading the poems provided, written as they are in a plain, unadorned style that conveys sincere emotion and humility. My favorite of the three poems is Mistaken Identity, which begins, "I thought I saw my mother / in the lesbian bar..."

What Language Can Do

Note: An updated version of this essay appears at ArtID.com

There’s quite an amazing installation on display now at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA. Jenny Holzer’s “Projections” casts the text of poems by Nobel laureate poet Wisława Szymborska across a bare, darkened room the length of a football field. Walking through these projected poems is at first like half-listening: you catch fragments of words but can’t put them all together. Then, if you take the time to stand at either end of the hall, you can read each poem clearly as it appears. The lines arrive more slowly than the time it takes to read them. Having a poem gradually fed to you allows for each line to really register.

Reading a few poems in this unconventional way is one thing—but that’s only part of the exhibit. Walk to the far end of the hall and you’ll find another room, smaller and more like a regular art gallery. Here, Holzer has displayed huge canvas reproductions of declassified documents detailing plans for the invasion of Iraq. The simplicity of the words— protect, isolate, detain, free, destroy— contrasts with the mess that’s actually happening in Iraq. What’s also shocking is how the writers of the presentation seemed to genuinely believe that 1) there were WMDs to be found, and 2) that a successful new government could be in place within a mere 135 days.

Upstairs from this gallery is the third part of the exhibit that serves as the very visceral and disturbing punch line. Again, reproduced in macro scale, Holzer has hung an email exchange in which two American soldiers debate the uses of torture, and beside this is a “Wish List” of aggressive interrogation techniques.

What’s amazing to me about this exhibit are the juxtapositions Holzer has created. The second and third galleries show the use of language that is institutional, political, and abstract—it has clearly led to widespread and, in many cases, futile human suffering. In the first gallery, where you are bathed in the light of a poet’s words, language is something very different—it is particular and personal, and while it can’t make sense of suffering, it documents it determinedly and with heart-wrenching beauty.

Think Positively

How beautiful! The following quote appeared in my inbox this morning, in Rob Bresney's Astrology & Pronoia Newsletter. (If you're not familiar with his Free Will Astrology, you should check it out.) Diane Ackerman is one of those authors whom, even though I haven't actually read an entire book of hers, I like because of the places where she is mentioned or quoted, the titles of her books, and the topics she embraces. It's like she's a friend of a friend. Here's the quote:

"I guess it shouldn't surprise us to find ourselves linked with the stars. Every atom of gold or silver jewelry was created in supernovas. The water we drink, the air we breathe, the ground we walk, the complicated pouch of fluids and salts and minerals and bones we are -- all forged in some early chaos of our sun. I think it was the astrophysicist John Wheeler who remarked that we are the sun's way of thinking about itself."

-Diane Ackerman, A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis

So Much for Objectivity

Today's Writer's Almanac quotes former New Yorker poetry editor Howard Moss as saying a good poem is "one I like." Although I would disagree with him on quite a few of those poems (I rarely like the poems printed in the New Yorker), I have to admire such a bald statement on the impossibility of objectivity.

True, one can strive towards objectivity - like my current MFA advisor, who recommended I read and learn from Jean Valentine's work even though she doesn't like it. (We'll see what she thinks of what I do when inspired by a poet she doesn't care for!)

It's also true that one's opinion will carry more weight when it's backed by the experience and breadth of knowledge that comes from years of work and study, as one would presume in the case of Howard Moss - but the fact remains that value judgements are always subjective, and there's no objective criteria for evaluating art.

I'm aware that this is a philosophical position and that some may disagree. For hundreds, if not thousands, of years the so-called "objective" standards for evaluating art have gradually evolved, but usually come down to the consensus of a large enough group of influential people.

An article published by the Poetry Foundation about high school students' reactions to canonical poems gives a refreshing take on the old standards. "Herbert sucks. Donne is a pimp." The high school students did trash my beloved Elizabeth Bishop, but at least they did it in an entertaining way.

On Revising

The time has come. I’m in the final semester of my MFA program, which means that by mid April I need to complete my book-length poetry manuscript. I have to send in the latest draft of it on January 31st. Hopefully this will be the first time of many that I have a book due (the poetry world doesn’t often work that way, but I will be publishing in many genres, and poetry contests have due dates). In any case, there’s nothing like a deadline for motivation. I have a list of the poems that need work and a schedule for doing the rewrites. One poem per day, and about three a day on Saturday and Sunday.

During my latest Goddard residency, I attended a workshop by Bhanu Kapil called “The Art of Failure,” in which she gave three methods for revising (in essence – 1, rewrite your piece by starting over on a blank page – 2, rewrite your piece by taking one image or word and using that as a seed, or – 3, find a site in the work that seems blank & ready to be transformed and rewrite it as its opposite). I am summarizing here because I don’t want to steal all her brilliant ideas and I could never recreate her inspired words anyway.

The particular quote that she spoke and I wrote down word for word (it’s now posted above my desk) is this: “In revision, make a decision and then fearlessly commit to that decision. This does not have to be comfortable.”

Chris Abani, our amazing visiting writer, reminded us students that writing is 20% writing and 80% rewriting. He recommended approaching rewriting on a blank sheet of paper. “Often what you like in the piece may be what’s holding you back,” he said. Thank you, Chris.

Experiences

Right now I am experiencing the magic of my MFA residency at Goddard College, an intensive week of workshops, readings, and seminars. I'll be in touch soon. For now, I leave you with this:

"For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences."
—Rainer Maria Rilke

Library Cats

Ok, I'm cheating ... posting pictures instead of writing. So what? I'm taking a [short] break from writing, and the kitties so cute!